Google hit by new version of lawsuit claiming it pays women less than men

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai meets Aida Khamiyeva, Go Wa Co of Almaty Kazakhstan, during the “Technovation World Pitch, a program run by STEM nonprofit Iridescent, in partnership this year with Google’s Made with Code,” in Mountain View, Calif., on Thursday, August 10, 2017. (JosieLepe/Bay Area News Group)

MOUNTAIN VIEW — Accusations that Google pays women less than men have resurfaced in a new version of a lawsuit, which now makes specific claims that affected female employees include engineers, program managers, salespeople and at least one preschool teacher.

A judge had tossed out an earlier version of the suit — which seeks class-action status — but had invited the plaintiffs to resubmit a new version describing the purported affected class more specifically.

Plaintiffs Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease, Kelli Wisuri and Heidi Lamar claim Google discriminates against women and breaks California law by slotting women into lower salary levels than men, giving women lower-paying jobs, promoting women more slowly and less frequently, and generally paying female employees less than men for similar work.

Lamar, a former preschool teacher at Google, was not named in the original complaint but was added to the amended version, which was filed Wednesday in California Superior Court in San Francisco.

Google said it disagreed with the “central allegations” of the amended legal action.

“We work really hard to create a great workplace for everyone, and to give everyone the chance to thrive here,” said spokeswoman Gina Scigliano. “Job levels and promotions are determined through rigorous hiring and promotion committees, and must pass multiple levels of review, including checks to make sure there is no bias in these decisions.”

The lawsuit claims that Google’s use of previous salary information is a key factor behind unequal pay for women.

First filed in September, the suit was dismissed in December by a California state court judge who said it cast too wide a net by defining the affected class as all women employed at Google during the previous four years.

Ethan Baron is a business reporter at The Mercury News, and a native of Silicon Valley before it was Silicon Valley. Baron has worked as a reporter, columnist, editor and photographer in newspapers and magazines for 25 years, covering business, politics, social issues, crime, the environment, outdoor sports, war and humanitarian crises.